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PayPal turns to developers in its quest for world domination

When Steve Ballmer repeated the now-famous and parodied words, “Developers,
developers, developers“, he may have been far more sane than he looked at the time.

From Apple to Facebook, some of
today’s most successful and popular internet companies are taking
advantage of third party developers to extend their products and make
them more useful and appealing. In many cases, these companies owe some
of their success to developers.

So it’s not entirely surprising that PayPal, which is no slouch, is betting that a big chunk of its future success could also be fuelled in part by third party developers. At its PayPal Innovate X 2009 conference in San Francisco yesterday, the internet’s dominant payment service announced its much-awaited PayPal X platform that aims to put the power of PayPal’s payment platform and infrastructure in the hands of these developers.

The Adaptive Payments APIs that are part of the PayPal X initiative include:

A Pay Anyone API that will allow financial institutions to give their customers the ability to send money to others, even if they don’t have a PayPal account.

A Send Money API that will enable developers to integrate PayPal payment functionality into any platform.

Chained Payments and Parallel Payments APIs that will give developers the ability to deal with a variety of scenarios in which payments needs to be sent to multiple recipients.

An Adaptive Accounts API that will permit developers to create PayPal accounts from within their own applications without the need to send non-PayPal users to PayPal’s website.

One of the goals with these APIs is to tap into the types of transactions that PayPal isn’t traditionally used to complete. Specifically, PayPal is targeting “markets that are traditionally served by cash and checks, such as rent,
consulting businesses or payroll“. For developers who build applications serving these markets, PayPal’s introductory pricing will be 50 cents for transactions that are funded with a bank account and which settle within three days, and a .75% transaction fee for transactions that are settled instantly.

These APIs will no doubt create lots of opportunities for developers, which could potentially lead to an Adaptive Payments ‘gold rush‘ as these APIs become available. After all, while there are many appealing development platforms these days, monetization on many of them is difficult. PayPal’s APIs, of course, are all related to transactions in which money changes hands. That, in theory, should make it easier for developers who create useful applications to capitalize on them financially.

If PayPal has its way, developers will now make PayPal a truly ubiquitous part of the online (and mobile) payment experience, even if consumers don’t even know that they’re using PayPal. As TechCrunch detailed, John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, is of the opinion that online payments should make up more than 20% of global payments right now. But in reality they only account for 5%. If there’s any group that can help him get to that 20%, it just might be developers, developers, developers.

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Marks & Spencer’s online strategy has gone through a variety of changes in recent months. As well as revamping their main website, the British retail giant has embraced social media by incorporating ratings and reviews into their website, and using Facebook and Twitter to join the conversation and better engage with customers.

It is encouraging to see a major brand like M&S experimenting with new online channels. By incorporating social media into their strategy, Marks & Spencer has enhanced its ability to respond to customers. Additionally, the brand is better placed to manage their online reputation more effectively.

At a recent iCrossing social media briefing, I asked Business Development Manager, Sienne Veit about the changes that Marks & Spencer has implemented and the impact of social media on the brand.

Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog may be best known for political
content, but its most popular feature is party agnostic and user
generated. Over the last three years, readers have submitted photos of
scenes snapped from their windows, for a weekly featured titled “The View From Your Window.”

Amid hundreds of photos and growing interest, The Atlantic has now chosen 200 of those images and produced a coffee table book. The front and back images have been crowd
sourced. But that’s not as interesting as the price tag, which
depends on how many people purchase the book.

The social gaming lead-gen controversy sparked by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington came to an end this week when OfferPal, the company he singled out for scamming users and advertisers, replaced its CEO and posted a mea culpa for its past and current practices.

Beyond that, Facebook, MySpace and mega gamer Zynga have made moves this week to better regulate gaming offers. Will the move decimate the social gaming industry?

CNN is one of the world’s leading news organizations and it’s website is arguably one of its most valuable assets today. In an effort to make it even more valuable, CNN has launched a new design for CNN.com over the weekend for both its U.S. and International versions.

According to Nick Wrenn, Vice President of Digital Services for CNN International, “We had a look on how our users use the site, and put a lot of thought and research behind it“. The finding: “Breaking news is our core brand and will continue to have a prominent
spot. But we wanted to showcase a lot more of the deep, rich content we
have. It was falling off the main page too quickly and people couldn’t
find it“.

Comcast’s version of “TV Everywhere” is going to be rolling out soon, but rather than complete television programming streaming everywhere, it’s starting to look more like “Some TV on a computer. Near your TV.” The company’s CEO announced that their online video service will launch later this year. But it will take awhile for Roberts’ vision of “pay once, consume anywhere” to come to fruition.

For starters, Comcast can only authenticate viewers in their own homes at launch.

October 21st 200919:10

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